Word: manuela
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...Sisto gives them an Al Gore-like Jesus, who stiffly recites scriptural lines and whose chief means of showing emotion is shouting. He may laugh and cry, but so rigidly and unnaturally you end up hoping for a reappearance by the comparatively interesting Satan--played by both a woman (Manuela Ruggeri) and a man (Jeroen Krabbe)--who taunts Jesus with the atrocities that will be committed in his name...
...about My Mother opens with dramatic cinematic technique as the camera in close focus follows an IV line. The sense of determinism continues to operate as an amorphous force in every subsequent scene. The next shot is a scene in an impeccably furnished apartment in Madrid. Manuela, an organ-transplant nurse played by Cecilia Roth (a luminary of the foreign film industry, with an uncanny ability to evoke tears) sits watching All About Eve with her son, Esteban (Eloy Azorin). Esteban is turning 17 the next day, and his eyes seem bright with literary genius and joie d'vivre...
...dream world of the next few scenes vanishes the next night, a rainy and cold evening and Esteban's birthday. Affonso Beato, director of photography, employs clever technique interposing dot matrix drawings of women in red over Manuela's image. Similarly, the night's coldness is reflected in camera angles of rain on the windows and fog in mirrors. One can almost feel the chill of the evening on one's shoulders. This clammy sensation follows the viewer as Manuel and Esteban observe a performance of Streetcar Named Desire, a play holding special significance to Manuela. Twenty years before, Manuela...
...anyone aside from the loyal film aficionado. Manuel donates Esteban's heart and goes to Barcelona in search of Esteban's father, a transvestite originally an Esteban himself but now Lola the Pioneer. The depiction of one train moving forward and another train moving backward, when coupled with Manuela's voice-over of the history and purpose for her journey detract from Almodvar's intention that the scene serve as a point of transition and departure. In an almost music-video-like sequence, a distraught Manuela peruses the local transvestite meat market. She does not find Lola, but she does...
...clues as to where scenes of tension replace scenes of relaxation. Visually, each scene has an obnoxious similarity to the one before. Despite the melodrama and technique slip-ups, Almodvar allows the women to learn about themselves even though each woman creates a new reality within her existence. Manuela pretends to be a poor theater aficionado, Agrado pretends to be a real woman, Huma wishes to run from a heart broken by her cocaine-snorting junkie girlfriend, and Sister Rosa must hide from the order and her parents. Yet in this situation, four women learn that the kindness of strangers...